Putting That Degree to Work

I've made no secret of my frustration with our press corps. Their lack of understanding of military matters after a decade of war is mind boggling. There are exceptions but as a whole, their state of knowledge for war and military history is so low that nobody with similar levels of knowledge about fashion or the arts would be allowed to write on fashion or arts. They'd embarrass themselves. And in war coverage, they do--but nobody in the business knows enough to call them on their lack of military knowledge.

Strategypage has a great piece on the myths that the press believes:

In the last decade, the mass media has been covering military matters much more intensively than they had in the previous decade. It showed, in the amount of misinformation and bad analysis that flowed from so many media outlets. As the old saying goes, when presented with the truth and the myth, print the myth. It gets more attention. These are some of the more misleading, but profitable, ones.

I won't go through the myths point by point. But then again, if you've read this blog (or Strategypage, for that matter--and you should read them) you'll have gotten them. Although I didn't focus too much on the contractor issue, though I was quite aware of it.

Don't expect them to get better, they have more important things to do, after all. "Journalism" degrees, indeed.